Quote from Transparent Body, Luminous World
Transparent Body, Luminous World: The Tantric Yoga of Sensation and Perception
by Rupert Spira
Sahaja Publications, Oxford, England, 2016 218 pages
As a young adult my interest in truth or the nature of reality involved the study and practice of the non-dual tradition of Advaita Vedanta. I received the initial teachings in this tradition at Colet House in London from Shantananda Saraswati, at that time the Shankaracharya of the north of India, and through the writings of Ramana Maharshi, who was my constant companion during those years. This exploration reached its culmination when, in my mid-thirties, I met my teacher, Francis Lucille, who introduced me to the teachings of Atmananda Krishna Menon and, more importantly, directly indicated the ultimate reality of experience.Until this encounter, my primary interest had been the recognition of my true nature, which I considered to be the height of the spiritual path. However, soon after we met, Francis also introduced me to the Tantric approach of Kashmir Shaivism, which he had learnt from his teacher, Jean Klein, who himself had brought it from India to the West toward the end of the twentieth century. (p. xiii)
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In most of the great traditions there are two complementary paths, the inward-facing path and the outward-facing path. The inward-facing path is based on the mind's recognition of the essential nature of its own experience. The mind notices that all it knows is its own experience. That is, the mind notices that all it ever knows or comes in contact with it itself: thinking, imagining, feeling, sensing, perceiving. Everything that is known by the mind takes place in the mind.
If everything appears in the mind, then everything that appears must share the essential nature of the mind. Therefore, in order to know the essential nature of anything, such as the body or the world, the mind must first know its own nature. The mind's knowledge of things is only as good as its knowledge of itself. As the Sufis say, "Whoever knows their self knows their Lord." That is, whoever knows the essential nature of mind knows the ultimate reality of the universe. (p. 4)
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This deep investigation of the belief in being a temporary, finite self, living in and as the body, has a counterpart in the exploration of our actual experience of the body. Just as beliefs become fixed in the mind, so ways of feeling, moving and relating become enshrined in the body. These habits, in which the belief in being a separate self is substantiated in our feelings at the level of the body, are laid down over many years and become the deeper core of the separate self or ego.
We don't just believe "I am a separate, temporary, located self," we feel it. The top layer of these feelings, most of which reside in the chest area, are fairly easy to identify: "I feel hurt," "I feel lonely," "I feel unloved," "I feel unworthy," "I feel guilty." These feelings are not quite as clearly delineated as our thoughts, but nevertheless they are clear. They have a name and a shape and a location. (p. 57)
-- quotes submitted by Jennifer Knight
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